Family Pictures 2009

RIP Liza

Oh our sweet little gerbil that stole our hearts! November 1st was a pretty terrible night for us. Our gerbil had a pretty terrible accident that ended with us taking her to an animal hospital in the middle of the night to be put down. I know what you're thinking, she was a gerbil, I know, but I loved that gerbil so, so much.


Lyda picked her out at a pet store back in October 2007. I was not excited to own a stinky rodent. After the kids had lost interest in her, Steve and I started letting her out for a few hours each night. We felt bad keeping her in the cage all the time and we sort of liked the challenge of trying to catch her. During those months of letting her roam around the house, we really started to enjoy her more. I remember reading on the couch one night and she climbed right up and crawled all over me and the book. She seemed to like being wherever we were. Poor thing was constantly being kicked and barely evaded being stepped on more than once. She cleaned up the crumbs under the kitchen table and she would search for anything that she could make a nest out of. We caught her dragging tissue paper, toilet paper, gum wrappers and even whole sheets of paper around.


Since she's been gone, Steve and I will occasionally have a "Liza moment" where we think we see her or hear her in the other room. It's kind of sad. She really was a sweet pet and is truly missed. So there you have it, now you can mock me for posting about our gerbil.

Rusty Cat

On September 17th this little kitty showed up at our house.


Such a sweet kitten from the start. The kids fell in love immediately and of course then the question was, "Can we keep it?" We decided that we would feed the hungry kitty and if it stayed around then we would talk about it. Amazingly when you feed a kitten, it keeps coming back. So I bought some cat food and we welcomed the kitty into our yard. Lyda wanted to name the cat Olivia and Kode wanted to name it Bolt. After determining it was a male, they finally agreed on Rusty (the boy robot that not many people know about). After it was determined that he was going to be a permanent resident, we got him a bed and set him up quite comfortably in the shed off our back porch. What a sweet cat he has been. He is so patient with the kids and has such a fun personality. He mostly stays outside because I'm allergic to him, but we make sure he gets lots of love. He sneaks in a lot and made friends with the gerbil. Him and Liza were hilarious to watch. I swear that gerbil was taunting Rusty as she would run back and forth next to the glass. Rusty would swat at her and try to figure out how to get to her. Pretty funny stuff.


When he's outside he spends most of his time up in the window right outside the kitchen. I love it. He just watches us all day long. I never thought I'd be a cat person, but I really love this cat!

Halloween

Halloween happened. Not much to say about it except that I felt like I had to dress my kids up multiple times for so many different Halloween events. What's up with that? What happened to just dressing up on Halloween night. Anyway, the kids had a blast and Ruby was so hilarious to watch. She couldn't believe that we would let her walk around with a bucket of candy. She got a dum-dum sucker from next door and had opened it and finished it by the time we made it back to our driveway. That was pretty much how it went for the rest of the night. At our ward party I found her more than once at the sucker tree game where all she had to do was pull a sucker off of the tree and it was hers. I dare say that she has a favorite holiday now.

Ruby was a last minute flower. She was going to be a ballerina, but the weather was cooler than anticipated. Thankfully she is still young enough to not care.


Lyda decided a while ago that she wanted to be Snow White because of her short hair. I thought that was great because we already had the dress.


Kode always has to pick something a little bit different each year. Something that not everybody will recognize. This year it was Astro Boy (not my favorite movie). He originally wanted to be Rusty the boy robot, but I sort of discouraged that because other than us, nobody would know who he was. Regardless what he chooses, I always find myself trying to throw together a costume. Fortunately Astro Boy didn't take much work.




Trick or Treating at Grandma & Grandpa Crandell's house.


One thing that I learned from this Halloween, is that in the future if I need to choose between spraying a whole head with black hair spray or buying a wig, I will go with the wig. That stuff is so messy.

Kode is 5 . . . I mean 4!

Well three days after Ruby's birthday celebration, it was Kode's turn. Oh how excited he was to have his birthday. I wonder if he still thinks he might catch up to Lyda. All day people asked him how old he was and he would start to tell them and then realize he couldn't remember, so he'd turn to me and quietly ask how old he was, and then he would turn back to the person asking and excitedly tell them he was 4. As the day went on he was getting the hang of handling the question himself, and then for some reason kept confusing 4 with 5. So for a majority of the day he told people he was 5. I'm happy to report that a month later he knows, without asking, that he is 4 years old. So we planned a little birthday party this year for Kode. We went to Jump and Shout which is made up of inflatables and tubes to climb through. It was a blast. The party may have been an hour too long, but the kids really did have a great time. And for the most part it was an ideal setting. Kode was in absolute heaven and that was the best part of the day. My friend Jessica was so great to take so many pictures of the event for me. Happy birthday Kode-Man. We love you so much and all of the extra testosterone that you bring into our home. You are boy through and through!

Ruby's Birthday!

Ruby turned 2 this last month. I can't believe she's 2 already! We kept her celebration pretty low key since she really doesn't play with friends at this point anyway. I happened to be babysitting the Jones kids on her birthday so we had cupcakes and opened presents with them. It was perfect for a 2 year old. This year she actually understood that the day was all about her. She loved opening presents and when they were gone she would randomly check gift bags to make sure she hadn't missed one. She asked for more presents for days after her birthday. And when Kode's turn came three days later, we had to convince her that they were for him and not her. My favorite part of her birthday was listening to her sing happy birthday to herself all day. She would say, "Happy to shoo me." Which translates into "happy to you, me" which still doesn't quite makes sense, but she always forgets to sing birthday for some reason. Anyway, it was pretty darn cute.

She was so excited to have balloons tied to her chair. Especially a princess one. I think Steve's antennae are awesome in this picture.


Loving her cake and ice cream. More the ice cream than the cake.


Fun to have some friends over.


We bought her this little dance outfit to match Lyda's. She looks pretty sweet in it. We also bought her this little baby doll potty hoping to get her excited about using the real potty. Apparently she prefers the baby potty.


Man we love this girl. She is so sweet, naughty and fun all bundled up in one package. She has opinions these days and is cracking us up all the time. We love you so much Ruby doo!

Disneyland!

Steve and I have wanted to take the kids to Disneyland for quite some time and we finally did it. We secretly planned the trip and packed the kids up to go without them knowing. We told the kids on the drive to California where we were going. It took a good five minutes before Lyda actually believed us. We left Ruby in good hands with cousin Stephanie and Grandma and Grandpa Edmunds. We were pretty confident that she would hate Disneyland and promise to take her when she's older. This is a picture that her cousin took of her while we were gone.


I think she had fun.

We have a tradition of riding the Peter Pan ride first. This is Steve's favorite ride.


The map was such an exciting thing for the kids. They constantly asked to see the map so we could figure out where to go. I loved that they were sharing. This may have been the only time they shared it, but it happened.


The kids loved most of the rides. Thunder Mountain seemed to be the biggest hit, along with the Matterhorn and Buzz Lightyear. They were both tall enough to ride just about everything so we took them on just about everything. The kids decided that Tower of Terror and Space Mountain (which was decked out for Halloween and way too scary for little kids) were the worst rides. Those two brought Kode to tears. I really think they would have loved Space Mountain without the fiery ghost things trying to grab them. (I know, worst parents ever) And they begged to go on the Tower of Terror. It was a first for Steve and I also. We realized as we were getting on the ride that we hadn't seen any young kids in the line other than ours. We looked at each other and wondered what we were taking our kids on. Here's a picture of Kode hanging on Steve's pant leg just prior to getting on Space Mountain.


We tried our first pineapple floats this time. I don't even want to think about how much we spent on pineapple floats alone. We have been drinking pineapple juice ever since. Steve took the opportunity to photograph our heavenly moment.


We played hard and had two fun filled days of "The Happiest Place on Earth". We crashed pretty hard at the end of each day. Kode even fell asleep in the stroller on the way out of the park. We truly had a blast and can't wait until our next trip back. And maybe next time we'll take Ruby with us.

First Days of School

We are a little late on this, but our kids had a first day of school too. Lyda is officially a first grader and she is actually liking it. Yay! Last year she begged to stay home from school every day. She never asks to stay home this year. One of the neatest things about living so close to the school is that we can see Lyda swinging at recess from our driveway. Sometimes she sees us and we wave at each other. I love being able to sneak a peek at my daughter during the day. I still have mixed feelings about her being gone all day long.


Kode started preschool finally. So many tears were shed as we would drop Lyda off at preschool and he had to go home with me. I guess I just expected that he would jump out of the car and be so excited to go to class. Not so. He threw the biggest fit I've ever seen and I left him crying in his teacher's arms. Well I am glad to report that after a few rough mornings, getting to know a few new friends, he is finally happy to go to preschool. And now it is Ruby who cries because she wants to go to preschool too.

We Start 'Em Young

Just getting a head start on the computer game addiction. So far so good.

Feeling the Love

This is how my life feels most days. If Lyda could have squeezed in there she would have.

Following the crowd

Somebody got a haircut at our house!


Because she wanted her hair just like hers.


Whatever her reasons, we think she looks pretty darn cute.

Featherhead and Airholes

This is my funny little featherhead who recently referred to his little sister's mouth as her airhole. Pretty sure Avatar inspired that one. Love it!

Mommy-Daughter Trip

Lyda was asked by her cousin Keira to be a flower girl in a wedding up in Utah. Lyda had been a flower girl in one other wedding and really wanted to do it again. I really liked the idea of taking a quick trip with my daughter. So we headed up to Utah a couple of weeks ago and had such a great trip. It was the first time Lyda had been on a plane old enough to actually realize how amazing it was that we were flying. She was so excited. She was only nervous when there were too many clouds and she couldn't see the ground. We rented a little convertible volkswagon bug that Lyda absolutely loved, and while it was fun to rent, I'd never recommend buying one. I think it is also a good time to mention that traveling in unfamiliar territory with a GPS is so the way to go. That little device saved me from so much trouble. Anyway, we spent a day with my cousin Aimee and her kids. We had such a fun time hiking around a waterfall and having a picnic near her house. I had totally forgotten how easy one child is. But I have to admit that on several occasions I thought, "man Kode would love this". Ruby probably would have hated it, so I was grateful not to be hauling her around. (Love you Ruby)



I really wanted to take Lyda to do something fun, just the two of us, so we spent an evening in Park City. We had dinner together and then went down the alpine slides and went on their semi-new rollercoaster ride. We had so much fun. It was so great to have that time with just Lyda. And to end the night just right we stopped at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for caramel apples. I dare say that my little girl was in heaven.



The next day we headed to Lehi to stay with my cousin Tamara and her little family. Tamara fixed Lyda's hair for the wedding and off we went so Lyda could perform her flower girl duties. Lyda was instructed to walk very slowly down the aisle and smile. I'm not sure how much she smiled but she certainly excelled at walking slowly. She really did a great job. The last time she was a flower girl, she ran out of flowers and just stopped because she was told the bride couldn't walk unless she had flowers to step on. She was determined to make the flowers last this time. It was pretty cute. It was a fun night overall. The wedding was beautiful and Lyda loved just hanging out in the bride's room while she got ready. After the wedding we headed back to my cousin's and visited for a while before heading off to bed.



We stopped by the Salt Lake Temple and the conference center before heading home. Maybe not as fun as the alpine slides, but Lyda did enjoy seeing the temple that she's seen in pictures so many times. It really was just a perfect trip for Lyda and I. Now she's asking when she gets to have a daddy-daughter trip.

Summer Cabin Trip

Summer has been keeping us busy. We started off the summer with a trip to the cabin with my family. My sisters-in-law and I headed up a few days early with our kids and the men joined us on the weekend. Christi and her kids happened to be up at their cabin at the same time and they spent some good time with us also. At first the kids had a hard time with the bugs. Some of them wouldn't go outside because they were everywhere. But eventually they learned to deal with the bugs and had fun with them anyway. We had lots of fun and enjoyed some nice weather.

A Little Bit of Random

Ruby has begun speaking a lot more lately. When she is in the mood she will repeat just about anything you ask her to. I love it. Her favorite phrase right now is "No way"! It is pretty hilarious. In fact the other night when I asked if she was ready for bed, she tilted her head down and glared up at me and in the most demonic growl I've ever heard, said "no way". So I let her stay up a little longer, mostly cause I was frightened. Fortunately she doesn't always growl at me. On Saturday night when I put her to bed, I said, "I love you Ruby", just like normal. As I walked toward the door I heard the sweetest little voice say, "Momma? I yuv you". And then I melted.

One morning I made pancakes for breakfast. I sort of just feed everybody as I make them so if they want another they come and get one. So this particular morning Kode finished his first pancake and then said to me, "Mom, my body wants you to bring me another pancake". So I said to him, "Well my body says it wants you to get up and come get one from me". He did not like this answer and said, "Well, why don't you listen to my body"? This is so Kode. He has such a unique way of looking at things and almost always cracks me up with his comments.


Kode and Lyda like to pretend to go camping in their bedroom. One day they invited me to go camping with them so I went. I quickly discovered that they had snuck a bag of marshmallows into their room. Kode offered to roast a marshmallow for me and I thought it was so stinkin' cute what he'd come up with. He put a marshmallow on the end of a paintbrush and then then turned on his flashlight to roast it. Very clever I thought. I told Steve about it and he said he remembers thinking that would work when he was a little kid. Guess he thinks like his daddy.

I overheard Lyda say to Kode recently, "There are better things to do than sit around and watch tv all day long. There is something I want you to know, if you just sit around and watch tv all day, then you'll get chunky legs".


Lyda has lost her two front teeth in the last few weeks. So cute to see her with spaces in her mouth. Though I don't think she can afford to lose many more if she wants to continue eating solid food. So here's my bad tooth fairy confession. By tooth number six she pretty much figured out how the old tooth fairy thing worked and stopped talking to us about it. That night I asked Steve if he would check to see if she had put it under her pillow. As stealthily as possible he went into her room and put his arm under her pillow. She stirred and then popped up and grabbed the pillow and said, "Still there". Somehow the fact that Steve's arm was also under the pillow didn't seem to phase her. So the tooth was there, but we didn't have a dollar to put under her pillow. Steve suggested 4 quarters, but I knew she would be disappointed because cash is so much cooler. I remembered seeing a dollar on her nightstand probably from the last tooth she'd lost and suggested we just use that and then put a dollar back the next day. So that's what we did and we went totally undetected but perhaps we are not the most honest tooth fairies around.